Lots decided and debated at the SEDA exec away day at Cumberland Lodge

2 days of SEDA discussion has resulted in plans for:

• this blog
• a whole year of activities to celebrate SEDA's 20th birthday in 2013. Liz Shrives is co-ordinating a group but is keen to hear of any ideas or offers of help. liz.shrives@btinternet.com
• a project to review membership packages
• formal links between the co-chairs and vice chair and key bodies like UUK, QAA, AUA etc. Also to ensure that we link with key bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
• a project to review all SEDA leaflets and marketing material
• SEDA preparations for the Universities White Paper and the HEA report on UKPSF
• launching a new SEDA course: Supporting and Leading Educational Change
• SEDA protocols for working with external bodies

Lovely accommodation ,great food, lively debates,a bracing walk at 7.30am and lots of discarded post its and flip chart paper! We welcomed new exec member Yaz El Hakim from Winchester and shared our current challenges and opportunities. What a range of experiences across the sector!

Other SEDA news:

• Shan Wareing University of the Arts appointed SEDA Fellowships co-ordinator
• New SEDA course Supporting/ Developing  Work-based Learning has been successful with its first co-hort
• Great response to the call for papers for the November SEDA conference
• Lots of requests for SEDA to be a partner in JISC bids after JISC recognition of success of previous WORK-WITH -IT SEDA JISC Project
• SEDA Writing Retreat is once again proving popular
• The annual SEDA Summer School is coming up soon
• As co-chair I have had meetings with QAA and Educational Competencies Consortium
• Caroline Stainton co-chair attended the AUA Gala Dinner

Help required!
Fiona Campbell and Celia Popovic invite participants for their research into what works in conferences. We are researching the impact of participation in educational development conferences on changes to academic practice. We need your help to identify what works, why it works and what processes at conferences make a difference to individual and institutional practice. Conferences are popular and are usually valued by participants, but they are also expensive and time consuming. After several years’ experience planning and organising national conferences with SEDA and local events in our own institutions, we feel it is timely to identify what works best. To date there has been surprisingly little research in this area.
We are seeking conference organisers willing to engage with our research. Participating conferences agree to circulate our online survey. We will follow-up willing participants three months after the conference with an online interview to a randomised selection of respondents to find out if any impact has resulted, to what extent the conference participation prompted this and what else has enabled or prevented hoped-for change. We will provide a summary of responses to each conference organiser, and will share the full anonymised results with the sector after the conclusion of this work in May 2012.
If you are organising a conference and are interested in taking part, please contact Fiona (f.campbell@napier.ac.uk) or Celia (celia.popovic@gmail.com)